Final: Part 1 – Wednesday 15 September
Chamber Performances with the Brodsky Quartet
The Brodsky Quartet
The Brodsky Quartet are at the forefront of the international chamber music scene. Their love and mastery of the traditional string quartet repertoire is evident from their highly acclaimed performances of composers ranging from Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Tchaikovsky to Shostakovich, Bartok, Britten and Respighi, as well as from their extensive, award-winning discography
At the same time, the Quartet are known for their pioneering work with a diverse range of performing artists, including singers Elvis Costello, Sting, Anne Sofie von Otter, Dawn Upshaw and Björk, instrumentalists Michael Collins, Joan Lluna, Martin Roscoe, Alexander Baillie, Tunde Jegede, Complicité Theatre Company and Icelandic poet Sjon, while their many collaborations with distinguished composers, including John Tavener, Witold Lutoslawski, Peter Sculthorpe, Django Bates, Sally Beamish, Dave Brubeck and Peter Maxwell Davies, have given them an unrivalled opportunity to influence and inspire some of the newest work for string quartet.Their passion to embrace “all good music” has been the driving force behind their success and has kept their approach fresh and their enthusiasm high for well over 30 years.
They have a huge and diverse discography, having worked with many major labels, finally forming their own label, Brodsky Records, in 2005. Recent awards for recording include the Diapason D’Or and the CHOC du Monde de la Musique for their recordings of string quartets by Britten, Beethoven and Janacek, whilst for their outstanding contribution to innovation in programming the Brodsky Quartet has received a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. They have taught at many international chamber music courses and held residencies in several music institutes, including the first such post at the University of Cambridge. They currently hold the International Chair of Chamber Music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and have been awarded Honorary Doctorates at the University of Kent and University of Teesside.
The quartet is named after the great Russian violinist Adolf Brodsky, dedicatee of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto and passionate chamber musician, who played an important role in musical life in 1920s Manchester and at the Royal Northern College of Music where the quartet studied.
Final: Part 2 – Sunday 19 September
Concerto Performances with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Guest Conductor Martyn Brabbins
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Formed in December 1935 by Scottish composer and conductor Ian Whyte, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is regarded as one of the UK’s leading orchestras. The winner of several awards, including a Royal Philharmonic Society Award (the only Scottish orchestra to do so) and four Gramophone Awards, its wide repertoire and flexible approach to format means it can perform a complex contemporary piece as a specialist ensemble alongside a major symphonic work. It has a busy broadcasting schedule on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Television and also records commercially.
The orchestra also takes live music to towns and cities across Scotland every season, is in demand at major UK festivals and plays every summer at the BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival. It is in demand at major festivals throughout the world, has appeared in many of the great musical centres of Europe and has toured the USA, South America and been twice to China, most recently in May 2008. The orchestra is extremely active in the community with an innovative learning programme dedicated to bringing the inspiration of great music to people of all ages and backgrounds. The BBC SSO is the leading supporter of living composers and new music in Scotland, having worked with many leading composers over the years from Britten and Shostakovich to Kurtág, Tan Dun and Jonathan Harvey, and it is especially proud of its support for Scottish composers.
Edinburgh-born Donald Runnicles became the BBC SSO’s Chief Conductor in September 2009, a post which runs concurrently with his position as General Music Director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He succeeded Ilan Volkov (Chief Conductor of the BBC SSO from January 2003-September 2009) who now holds the post of Principal Guest Conductor. Eminent British musician Andrew Manze will become the orchestra’s Associate Guest Conductor from November 2010.
The BBC SSO is 75 years old this year, continues to celebrate both its longevity and its artistic success, and it looks forward to many more years of distinguished service to the art of music in Scotland and beyond.
Martyn Brabbins
Conductor
Artistic Director of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music 2005-2007, he was Associate Principal Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 1994-2005. He is Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, a position which started in September 2009.
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After studying composition in London and then conducting with Ilya Musin in Leningrad, his career was launched when he won first prize at the 1988 Leeds Conductors’ Competition. Since then Brabbins has regularly conducted all the major UK orchestras and is much sought-after in Europe, notably in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Scandinavia.
Since his early days conducting Mozart at the Kirov, Brabbins has also conducted for the Deutsche Oper Berlin, English National Opera and Opera North and Frankfurt Opera. This coming season he conducts Wozzeck at the Flemish Oper, returns to Hamburg for Death in Venice (following his debut last season in Lyon with the same work), and returns to the Netherlands Opera for a world premiere. Last season Brabbins’ symphonic engagements included appearances at the South Bank in subcription with the London Philharmonic and Philharmonia orchestras; his Tokyo debut, with the Tokyo Metropolitan (where he returns in 2011); and visits to the Netherlands Radio Chamber in the prestigious Matinee series, the Residentie Orkest, Salzburg Mozarteumorchester and Lahti Symphony. He is a regular guest with the City of Birmingham Symphony, Halle and BBC Philharmonic orchestras, and appears several times each season with the BBC Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony orchestras in subscription and at the BBC Proms.
David Owen Norris
Norris is Professor of Musical Performance at the University of Southampton and Visiting Professor of Fortepiano at the Royal College of Music, an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, Educational Fellow of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and of the Royal College of Organists
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He was Organ Scholar at Keble, and left Oxford with a First and a Composition Scholarship to study in London and Paris. He was Repetiteur at the Royal Opera House, Harpist at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Artistic Director of Festivals in Cardiff and Petworth, Chairman of the Steans Institute for Singers in Chicago, and the Gresham Professor of Music in the City of London. His many radio series have included The Works, But I know what I like and All the Rage, and he presented the drive-time show In Tune for several years.
First and foremost he is a pianist, beginning as an accompanist to such artists as Dame Janet Baker, Jean-Pierre Rampal and Larry Adler. In 1991, after a worldwide search, the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival appointed him the first Gilmore Artist, a quadrennial award. His subsequent international solo career has included concertos with the Chicago and Detroit Symphony Orchestras and the Handel & Haydn Society in Boston (amongst many other North American orchestras), the Philharmonia, the Academy of Ancient Music, and several of the BBC’s orchestras, including four appearances at the Proms: and solo recitals all over North America and Australia, and in every European country from Hungary westward.
Recent recordings include Mendelssohn songs and the complete Songs without Words incorporating new theories of musical syntax, Britten’s Who are these children?, and newly discovered pieces from Jane Austen’s music collection. Norris’s BBC Radio 4 programme Jane Austen’s iPod, broadcast on January 2nd, immediately led to the commissioning of four more such programmes on literary figures, which will culminate in Dickens on Christmas Day. This summer he has appeared in the Bristol ‘Worlds to Conquer’ conference, the Royal Society conference on Early Science, the Cheltenham Science Festival, and the Harrogate Crimewriting Festival.
Photo: Christian Steiner
Derek Watson
Compere
Derek is a composer, pianist, lecturer and writer on music. He studied composition with Alan Bush at the Royal Academy of Music in London and now lives in the Scottish Borders. His books include Richard Wagner: A Biography and the volumes on Bruckner and Liszt in the Master Musicians Series.
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Derek gives lectures on opera and has broadcast frequently for the BBC, and contributed articles to the New Grove, the Oxford Companion to Music, and several musical and academic periodicals. As an actor, using the stage name Derwent Watson, he has appeared in nearly sixty productions with the Glasgow Citizens Theatre Company; he has also appeared in London’s West End with several of the leading theatre companies, and on BBC TV & Radio.
Derek will present the Concerto Finale of the Competition at the City Hall, introducing each of the finalists with their concertos.